This is Me in So Many Words

 

In this self portrait, I feature two sides of myself, the part that is openly displayed to others and the parts of me that are a little bit harder to see at first glance. On the left side,  I wrote a letter about myself*, detailing out things that popped in my head as defining character traits to affirm my identity and make a point to my future self about not just how I see myself, but who i am at my core.. I then used this text and warped it in the outline of my face using envelope distort,, and then added on a few of my defining facial features. My eyebrows are created using parentheses, my lips are “C’s” and “P’s,” and my nose is made of one single letter “P.” My hair is created from descriptors used for my actual hair (“Curly and straight and thick and frizzy and brown and gold and mine”) as well as the repeated letter “g” for the tendril.  

 However, I did not depict my eyes on the left side, choosing instead to represent them on the right with the blue/grey splotch; each hue in the gradient taken from two different pictures of my eyes in different lighting. Because eyes are often referred to as “the windows of the soul,” I decided to place them on the right side of this image as a sort of bridge between the two sides. The second abstract image on the right side is done both to compliment the blue with the orange as well as just to add a pop of color and interest.

 Other small details that I placed on the right include succulents and flowers to indicate vitality, growth, and my love of plants. These are created with the word “love” on each of the leaves/petals. The tea cup indicates my desire to make people feel warm and comfortable, and in return my desire to be warmed and comforted, as well as my simple love of tea. Drinking tea is a form of sustenance both physically and for the soul, so I used the word “alive” to create it, reminding myself to sustain myself and to do things that  fill me emotionally. The steam above the cup follows a path and says: “It is a good thing that I am living,” to serve as a reminder to myself in tough times. 

The snake is an animal I often use to represent myself- admittedly, partially because I’m a huge nerd and a Slytherin. However, I also view snakes as ambitious, resourceful, and cunning which are all traits that I largely admire and wish to embody.  The snake’s body is made using a text path and is filled with reminders for my mental health and encouraging statements, and the head was created using envelope distort of the repeated letter “s.”

Growing up, I always hated my handwriting, but I’ve grown to appreciate it and accept it as part of who I am (someone once said that handwriting is the visual equivalent of someone’s voice and I thought that was really cute), which is why I decided to prominently display my signature at the bottom of the image.

 When I was brainstorming this project, I was having a bit of a bad brain day and my anxiety was really getting to me. For this reason, I created the artwork that I needed: one that is affirming and validating as can be seen by the words used throughout the work. I’m learning how to be kinder to myself, and I feel that creating this self-portrait was a good step in the right direction. 

*Here is the letter that can be seen in my face in this image:

Dear Emily Huff,

My name is Emily, and this is who I am. I am ambitious, cunning, clever, and resourceful. I am a Slytherin. I am futuristic. I am good at ideation and input. I am strategic and competitive. These are my strengths. I am extraverted, intuitive, a thinker, and a perceiver. This is my personality. I believe in equity in education. I believe in sustainability and preserving the Earth. I believe in human kindness. These are my causes. President of Hui Malama. Captain of the Mililani Mock Trial Team. Head of Set Design and Construction.  Student. Public Relations Major. Daughter. Sister. These are my titles. I am a bisexual woman. This is my identity. I am prideful, brash, and inconsistent. These are my faults. I have anxiety that I have learned to live with, but that makes every day significantly harder. Sometimes I feel like I’m not enough. Sometimes I worry about not making a positive impact on the world. I’m 18. I feel like I’m running out of time. I am growing and learning to thrive. I am adapting and getting stronger. I read and I like to taste the words. I drink tea with an abundance of honey and daydream about raising bees.  I make my food pretty to motivate myself to eat healthy. I cry and I smile. I am human. I yearn to care for animals, plants, and the people around me. I can speak in front of a crowd but struggle to respond to emails. I make my own earrings. I wear bold and flashy outfits because they make me smile. I wear them and call them atrocious so that if I am ugly I have something else to blame and it was a choice that I made. I still read fanfiction because it comforts me. I also read and memorize Shakespeare. I am kind and gentle. I am abrasive and inconsiderate. I do everything I can to make people laugh because if they are laughing I know at least for that moment that my presence is valued. I am at my most confident when I’m lip syncing alone in the mirror. I am least confident when I have to be sincere and vulnerable. I love the Christmas season but don’t particularly care for the day itself. Same for Halloween. I want to learn several different languages. I bite my thumb when I’m nervous and leave angry red scratch marks on my arms when I’m anxious. I smile so wide that my eyes almost close when I’m happy. I dance along to music inside my own head. I am complex. I have depth. I am unique, as every person is. I will continue to evolve, but I will not change. I am me, and I am proud. 

Sincerely,

Me